


Dream Sequence

by reckingstacks



Series: Memory Cell [3]
Category: Neoscum (Podcast)
Genre: Childhood, Gen, dream - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 08:07:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17804252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reckingstacks/pseuds/reckingstacks
Summary: If you could say something, anything, what would it be? What would you tell yourself?





	Dream Sequence

**Author's Note:**

> Happy NeoScum Friday folks. In this edition of Memory Cell we jump forward in Zenith's timeline... and then right back into the past again through the lense of the future. The NeoScum valentine kicked my whole ass and without totally spoiling it Z's page was incredibly tonally/thematically similar to scenes I've already been quietly thinking about for a few weeks so I felt like I really had to polish them into a worthwhile piece of writing and get it On Line.
> 
> I use ze/hir pronouns for Zenith because no rules just right

Sometimes, it is dark.

Sometimes, you can smell the pine and the rain, and feel your shirt clinging to your skin in the humid air.

Sometimes, you can see neon, neon, so much neon, flashing in and out from between looming skyscrapers choked in aging pipes and bundles of wire.

Sometimes, the same long, empty roads you travel by day stretch out into the distance, and conversation buzzes in the seats in front of you.

This time, it is white.

This is not the white that you have known before. That white was purposeful; clinical. This time, there is no bed, and there are no monitors, and there are no posters, or even any walls, as far as you can tell. Just a huge, blank expanse of nothing. When you take a few steps, you don't feel like you're going anywhere. There's no sense of space or distance. You could walk for hours and not know you'd moved from this spot.

You turn a few times, looking in every direction, searching for _anything_ that might give you some perspective.

There's a person.

You stop dead.

They're a hundred feet or so away. Small; small enough to be a child. Their head is shaved clean, and you think you can see cybernetics embedded in their scalp, but the high collar of their jumpsuit--

Your gaze drops to their arms: metallic and shining in the all-encompassing white.

Your stomach twists in a way that makes you want to puke, in a way that makes you feel like you _should_ be puking, but it doesn't happen. The person, this-- You-- somehow seems to know you see hir, and whips around, and it's the strangest fucking thing, looking at a real, living version of yourself from another time; at a version of yourself you barely even know. Familiar, with the broad nose, the ocular drone and the tell-tale scar, but not. Like this isn't quite you. Like it's someone else. Like it's a whole other person.

And ze looks so scared.

Your whole body is shaking and you still feel ready to vomit at any second, but something carries you forward and refuses to let your legs buckle. The other You just watches, wary, inching back but not fully retreating, until you're within a few feet of one another. For a minute, you just stare. You don't know what to do. You don't know what you were going to do. You don't know what you're _supposed_ to do, because fuck, who does? How many people will ever find themselves this situation? Who plans for _this?_

In the end, you crouch down, bringing yourself closer to eye level with the other You. You hold out a hand. Ze eyes it nervously.

"It's okay," you say, gently.

Trying to calm hir rapid, shaking breath, the other You reaches back out, and you see - you don't know how you didn't notice this before - the half-dried blood caked onto hir hand, hir arm. _Tink._ Hir fingers touch your palm. The white around you begins to fade, giving way to a comfortable but not-total darkness, illuminated by a warm, sourceless glow.

You make eye contact again. The fear isn't gone, per se, but it's different, now. It's no longer a fear of you, a potential threat. It's a fear you know. It's the fear, you realise, that ties you, the current you in the here and now, to this other You: the fear of yourself and the fear of what other people will make you do.

"Come here," you say-- your voice is already wavering-- and you draw the other You in for a hug, and ze tenses at first but then hir whole body starts shaking, heaving and ze presses hir face deep into your shoulder and digs hir fingers into your back. You catch the first quiet sob, right by your ear. You're crying, too. Hot tears are streaming down your right cheek and you make no effort to wipe them away.

You don't remember much from your time as a child - from when this was you, or you were this, or whatever - and you definitely don't remember ever being touched gently. You wonder if the other You does. You doubt it. The brief, muted memories you have of shouting, gunfire, exhaustion and cold, uncaring doctors flash by in your mind. You hold the other You even tighter.

"It's gonna be okay." The words come out in a hoarse whisper. "You're gonna be okay." You don't want to stop clinging to You, but eventually you do, reluctantly, and pry hir away from you to look hir in the eye again. Hir organic eye is bloodshot, and hir cheek is wet, and hir nose is running, and ze tries in vain to wipe away some of the mess. It does nothing, save for smearing snot over the back of hir already-bloodstained hand. Some of the blood flakes off and sticks to hir face. It strikes you, so suddenly and so hard, how absolutely powerless you are to fix anything. There is nothing you can do to save this other You: to save yourself. You will get up and walk away at the end of this and nothing will change. That is immutable.

You have to try. You have to do something. Reach deep, deep inside yourself, and find what you know will give hir hope.

"Listen," you say, placing a hand on hir shoulder and holding hir firmly. "This isn't forever. You're gonna get away from this, one day. Things are gonna get so much better." The other You has latched onto your arm but is making no attempts to remove it from hir shoulder. Maybe ze doesn't want you to. You reach out and grab the other shoulder, too. "You're gonna meet new people and have a new life, and it's-- It's gonna be yours. All yours."

You have to stop for a moment, because you're almost choking on your own tears and you need to compose yourself before you continue. "What's happening to you right now-- Everything they make you do-- None of it is your fault, okay? Remember that. None of it. You're just... a kid. God, fuck. You're just a fucking kid."

And you lose it.

You pull the other You back in for a hug, and ze melts right into it, wrapping hirself back around you. For a while, the two of you just sit like that. You can feel yourself quake occasionally when another wave of fresh tears comes, but you're too lost in your own head to care. All you want to do is stay here, with this kid bundled in your arms. With You bundled in your arms. That's what you wanted; what you needed: someone to let you know there was an end to the chaos. Maybe you still need it now. Maybe you still want it just as badly as you did then.

You don't want to let go. This strange self-comforting of a past iteration of yourself is the closest you've ever come to any real catharsis, and letting go feels like abandoning someone-- abandoning a _child_ \-- while they lie at your feet, at their most vulnerable. But you know it's going to end. The empty, low-lit world around you starts to fall away in squares, like pixels, as you ease away to look at the other You one more time.

"Hang in there, okay?" The way you've been crying, your face must look no better than hirs. The taste of salt is running into your mouth. "You'll get out. You'll get away from... All of this. All of them. You'll find people who love you. _They'll_ find _you_. I promise. Just hold on."

Your vision half-blurs as tears well again in your organic eye, but you can see the other You nodding. The glow around you dims. The world fades to black.

Now, it is dark.


End file.
